A very interested poll done by Gallup.com asked Americans to use their very best guess to estimate what percentage of Americans they think are gay or lesbian. The findings suggest that on average American adults estimate that 25% of Americans are gay or lesbian. Whoa, that’s an interesting stat, but I doubt it’s even close to accurate. More specifically, 52% estimated that at least 1 in 5 Americans are gay or lesbian, with 35% believing that it’s actually more like 1 in 4 Americans. Thirty percent believe that gays & lesbians account for less that 15%.

Despite this opinion poll, there isn’t much evidence to figure out how many people are actually gay or lesbian in the United States because there are too few representative surveys that ask people about their sexual orientation, or simply that people may not even wish to be open about it. That said…

Coincidently, Tyrell and I just filled out our Canadian Census Survey today. I guess we were a bit late sending it in (we only received it a couple weeks ago) as a woman came knocking on our door this morning asking us to fill it out right away – so we did. In the survey, we were in fact asked about our sexuality. The form asked what my relationship was to the person I was living with. The answer that I checked was “Common Law – Same Sex Partner” or something along those lines. It will be very interesting to see the results of the census. We’ll have a much better idea of how many gay & lesbian adults are living together in Canada, but still won’t know exactly how many people are gay. There wasn’t anywhere on the survey for someone who wasn’t in a relationship with someone living together to divulge their sexuality. Not to mention all the teens that are not as likely to tell their parents they are gay just yet.

Based on my current neighborhood, I would say about 90% of people are gay.

http://nikolaos-thiwerspoon.blogspot.com/ Nick Thiwerspoon

Kinsey’s research back in the 40s, since confirmed by newer studies, shows that a very large proportion of the male population is gay-shaded, if not 100% gay:

“25 per cent of the male population has more than incidental homosexual experience or reactions (i.e. rates 2-6) for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55. In terms of averages, one male out of approximately every four has had or will have such a distinct and continued homosexual experience.”

“18 per cent of the males have at least as much of the homosexual as the heterosexual in their histories (i.e., rate 3-6) for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 35. This is more than one in six of the white male population.”

In a randomly selected group of men over 16, one in four has had sex with men. This doesn’t mean they’re gay, but it does mean that perhaps 6 times as many blokes who are in fact 100% gay have ongoing or periodic gay relationships.

In a world where the Christian-Fascists didn’t keep on poisoning the wells, lots of guys who might appear straight to the world, will love and have sex with other blokes, because it would cease to be thought of as immoral, evil, unBiblical, perverted and wrong. It would be thought of as normal and good. “Love is not love which alters as it alteration finds” as one of history’s most famous bisexuals said.

Note that Kinsey did not say that 10 per cent of the male population was gay. In fact he said that there was no such thing as a homosexual.

“Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. Not all things are black nor all things white. It is a fundamental law of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeonholes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. The sooner we learn this concerning human sexual behavior the sooner we shall reach a sound understanding of the realities of sex. It would encourage clearer thinking on these matters if persons were not characterized as heterosexual or homosexual, but as individuals who have had certain amounts of heterosexual experience and certain amounts of homosexual experience. Instead of using these terms as substantives which stand for persons, or even as adjectives to describe persons, they may better be used to describe the nature of their overt sexual relations.”

You might also find this post on my blog interesting. It’s about how 10% of so-called straight married men regularly have sex with guys:

This startling stat may not be so remarkable upon reflection of the Kinsey studies, in that some 60% of people have had a same sex experience to orgasm at some point in their lives, far more often as teens than not. Though same sex orgasm at age 18 or older percentage is also quite high. People really don’t understand stats as well because these stats say that one of every five people each American knows is gay or lesbian, which there are a lot of us about but not that many.